The Book Show

What happens when a terrible accident leaves you feeling more alive than ever? Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Ayad Akhtar explores that question in 'The Radiance,' a provocative new novel about faith, identity, desire, and the mysteries of the human mind.

For more than two decades, Louise Penny has made the village of Three Pines a favorite destination for mystery readers. Now Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is drawn into another unsettling case – his 21st. Penny joins us to talk about Miss Wolcott’s Ghost, and why the past is never quite finished with us.Louise Penny on this week’s Book Show.

Bonnie Garmus has followed up the blockbuster success of her 'Lessons in Chemistry ' with 'Peck & Peck,' a funny, big-hearted novel set inside an eccentric 1980s New York poetry journal. It’s a story about ambition, art, difficult colleagues and discovering where you belong.

Edwidge Danticat has long explored Haiti, family, memory, and the meaning of home. Her new novel,'Dèy,' follows a Haitian American woman who survives a mass shooting and keeps it secret, confronting trauma, grief, motherhood, and survival.Edwidge Danticat on this week’s Book Show.

Emily St. John Mandel, bestselling author of 'Station Eleven,' returns with 'Exit Party.' Set in a fractured America in 2031, the novel follows an ex-prisoner into a mysterious celebration—and a story of surveillance, freedom, love, and shifting realities.

Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James returns to Jamaica with 'The Disappearers.' Set in Kingston in 1988, the novel follows eight gay men whose lives are forever changed by a brutal attack.James joins us to talk about friendship, violence, identity, survival and a story that asks what it means to disappear.

Chang-Rae Lee joins us to discuss 'A Tender Age,' a coming-of-age story set in the summer of 1976 that explores family, identity, memory, and the moments that shape a life. From the award-winning author of Native Speaker comes a deeply moving new novel.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo has made a career exploring the complicated relationships of small-town America. His latest, 'Under the Falls,' follows a famous musician returning to the Adirondack town he fled years ago, where old friends, an old love and old secrets are waiting.

Sigrid Nunez has long been one of America's most thoughtful literary voices. Now, after more than three decades as a novelist, she's published her first collection of short fiction, 'It Will Come Back to You.' The stories span much of her career, bringing together characters wrestling with memory, loneliness, desire, aging, and the strange turns of everyday life.

Novelist Paul Yoon has earned acclaim for fiction that examines lives shaped by war, exile, and resilience. His new novel, 'Etna,' tells an unforgettable story through the eyes of a combat-trained dog who leaves the soldiers he served alongside to undertake an odyssey back to the place he once called home.

Physician and acclaimed novelist Daniel Mason has a gift for finding the extraordinary in everyday life. His new novel, 'Country People,' follows a young family whose move to rural Vermont becomes an unexpected journey into folklore, community, and imagination.

Colson Whitehead is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and now brings his acclaimed Harlem trilogy to a close with 'Cool Machine.' The novel reunites readers with furniture dealer and reluctant fence Ray Carney as one last score draws him back into New York City’s criminal underworld.

Novelist Amy Bloom ventures into new territory with her first mystery novel, 'Blunt Instrument.' At the center is Dell Chandler, a failed professor and newly minted private investigator called to solve the murder of an eminent English scholar whose death by a bronze Hawthorne bust leaves an entire university full of suspects.

Novelist Francine Prose’s latest, 'Five Weeks in the Country,' turns a strange real-life literary episode into rich, darkly funny fiction. In the summer of 1857, Hans Christian Andersen arrives at Charles Dickens’ country home for what should have been a brief visit. Instead, he stays five excruciating weeks.

Author Colm Toibin’s latest, 'The News From Dublin,' is his first story collection in more than a decade. The volume gathers nine stories set across Ireland, Spain, the United States, and beyond, tracing lives shaped by distance, memory, and the pull of home.

Andrew Sean Greer, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less, returns with 'Villa Coco,' a witty and warmhearted novel set in the hills of Tuscany.The story follows a drifting young American who takes a job with the eccentric Baronessa Coco and soon finds himself tangled in romance, old secrets, impossible errands, and one final quest for lost love.

Ann Patchett's new novel, Whistler, begins with a chance meeting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Daphne Fuller unexpectedly encounters Eddie Triplett, the former stepfather who vanished from her life decades earlier.Their reunion reopens memories of a childhood tragedy and a relationship that quietly transformed them both. The latest novel is 'Whistler' which explores grief, coincidence, and the lingering pull of the past.

In his latest novel, “The River Is Waiting,” Wally Lamb gives us a story about one man’s fall and uncertain redemption. Corby Ledbetter, a married, father of twins, makes a tragic mistake that sends him to prison and shatters his family. Behind bars, he faces the consequences of addiction, grief, and guilt—while searching for a path to forgiveness.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout has spent decades writing about the quiet devastations and unexpected moments of grace that shape ordinary lives. Her latest novel, ‘The Things We Never Say,’ introduces a new cast of characters and a new setting while remaining unmistakably Strout in its emotional precision.

Douglas Stuart’s novels include ‘Shuggie Bain’ and ‘Young Mungo.’ In his latest novel ‘John of John,’ Stuart shifts the landscape but not the intensity. Set in Scotland’s remote Hebridean islands, the novel follows a young man returning home, confronting a family bound by silence, expectation, and deeply rooted tradition.